23 January 2012

THE ART OF AUTHENTIC LIVING: HOW TO LIVE AND BREATHE YOUR TRUTH

Today's post is about being-ness. It is about learning how to be the person you truly are. It is about creating your self and your life from the inside out.

A key aspect of this is authenticity. Being your authentic self. Living your authentic life. To me, this means: find out who you are, and then live it and breathe it.

"What does it mean to live authentically? Living authentically is what you're doing when you find congruence between your inner world: your feelings, values, gifts, needs, spirituality, and passions, and your outer world: your job, relationships, home, and community. When you live an authentic life, these things support and synergize each other" --Susan Piver

For years, I read about the practice of living authentically, yet I never really experienced it. I knew it as a concept. An idea. But embodying authenticity and stepping 100% totally and utterly in to your truth, is a completely different experience.

I grasped fleeting moments of authenticity when I would find myself immersed in a project, in an area of passion or in a creative task. I felt aligned. I felt like I was doing exactly what I needed to be doing in this moment. I felt clear headed and centred. It was like I was exactly where I needed to be.

While I caught the occasional glimpse of authenticity, living these principles as my daily truth felt impossible. For so long, I felt like I knew who I was on the inside, but I never felt that it was reflected on the outside in my day to day life.

It has not been until recently that I have actually began to walk my talk. To live and breathe my truth. To be who I really am. For me, living authentically means showing the world who I know I am and ensuring that every decision, every action, every word is aligned with that.

Since I have been doing this I have been feeling new emotions, experiencing magic, witnessing synchronicities. Life has a new level of flow. It has purpose and meaning. I have a goal that feels greater than I will ever be.

WHO DO YOU WANT TO BE IN THE WORLD?

Many of us are not motivated by the idea of living an authentic life and discovering our true selves. Rather we are happy to live a life that bring us superficial satisfaction, fleeting feelings of pleasure, and the love and approval of others. We play a safe game. We do what we think is right. We follow the pack. We keep ourselves comfortable.

We are very often conditioned to live this way. We are taught who we need to be in order to get love, or what we need to do to get praise. We consequently throw our own inner guidance out the window and replace it with the guidance of others. We lose touch with what we really want for ourselves. We forget who we were really born to be.

To live an authentic life we have to be willing to let all of this go. We have to let go of our old ways of being. An authentic life is about unlearning all the messages you have received from your family, your peers, your environment, and relearning your truth. It is about discovering who you really are.

WHAT ARE THE QUALITIES OF AN AUTHENTIC LIFE?

+ Embodying your truth: You live so completely and utterly in line with your truth, that you never doubt yourself. You honour and trust yourself so completely that you can follow what is right for you whether or not other people like it or agree with it.

+ Living from your heart space: This means that everything you do is motivated by love and comes from a space of love. Your heart is what guides you. You follow your bliss.You can not be authentic if fear is running your life.

+ Being on purpose: You know exactly what you are meant to be doing with your life, and you are doing it. You are connected to a larger meaning in your life rather than the simple day in and day out actions of surviving. You are here to serve.

+ Intuition: You are connected to your inner self. You have an inner awareness. You can connect with your body, your soul and your self, and hear the guidance that comes from the higher part of you. You act on your inspiration.

+ Knowing yourself: You have a beautiful and keen self awareness. You are willing to peel back the layers of your self and discover what is who you really are and what is not. You are comfortable getting familiar with the wonderful aspects of yourself, as well as the deep, dark and not so nice aspects.

+ Courage: You have such a commitment to your authentic life that you are willing to do whatever it takes. Overcome any fear. Triumph over any challenge. Take any risk.

HOW TO LIVE MORE AUTHENTICALLY

+ Identify your passions:Do you know what you are passionate about? Honestly. Do you know what excites you, inspires you and ignites your little heart? To live authentically, you have to be living in line with your passion. So, if you do not know what you are passionate about I suggest you sit down and start to find out. Get out of your head, listen to your heart and hear what it is telling you.

+ Journal: Journalling is a fantastic tool to help unveil your passions. Start by simply sitting down and free writing, without judgement. Write lists about all the things you love to do. Write about your ideal life. What would be the most amazing way you could spend each day of your life? What are those things that you do, where time just passes? What makes you come alive?

+ Become self-aware: Self awareness is a undervalued principle. Yet, it is the first step to creating beautiful and powerful change in your life. Start to get curious about yourself. What are your beliefs? What are your values? How have you become the person you are? Take some time to introspect. What decisions have shaped your life? What experiences have defined your life? It is impossible to live an authentic life, if you do not know who you are.+ Choose love: Living authentically will require you to relinquish all of the fear based thinking you have been indulging in. You must choose to love yourself and make decisions based on what you love. You will be required to step out in to the world and in order to do so you will have to let go of the fear that has been keeping you small. Think in loving, support and limitless ways rather than fearful, negative and limited ways.

+ Take inspired action: As you start to connect with your authentic self, you will realise it is not enough to simply know who you are. You have to experience who you are. This means taking new actions and creating experiences in the outer world that match who you are. As you connect with yourself you will feel inspired to act in new ways. It will be these new actions that will begin to define yourself in a new way and change how you are living your life.

+ Let go of others opinions: You are going to have to give up on putting other peoples opinions before your own. You will have to stop worrying about what other people will think. You cannot live an authentic life if you are continuously trying to mould yourself to the preferences of others. To play a big, true, real life you must march to the beat of your own drum and know that the people who truly love you will you support you no matter what."Be who you are and say what you feel because those who mind don't matter and those who matter don't mind" -- Dr Seuss

So, over to you! I would love to hear more about your journey...
+ Do you feel you are living an authentic life?
+ If so, what practices have you used to help get you there?
+ If not, what do you need to do to get you there?

8 comments:

This is a fantastic post! I think at the moment I'm one foot in and the other foot out. Looking down through the list of qualities I'm probably 60/40. The soul searching continues! I used to be a school teacher, but my head & heart conflicted about whether this was the right kind of 'teaching' that I should be doing. At the moment I'm working in a creative job & it's allowing me the opportunity to investigate my 'authenthic self'. Like you said, there's days I feel very aligned, and other days where I feel very unbalanced. But I suppose self awareness is a start! Courage & inspired action are two words which have jumped out of this post for me. And I think it's definitely something I need to focus on. Thanks Connie x

Jenn, thank your for your beautiful comment! Guess what, I also trained as a teacher! I found that while I LOVED seeing the kids learn and grow, and I adored being able to facilitate change and development in others, I was not at all passionate about the content (eg: maths, science, english) I was teaching! Sounds similar to your situation :)

I started asking myself 'what do I feel would be the most valuable and powerful thing I could teach to others?' and I came up with answer that if I could teach them about THEMSELVES, their minds, their bodies, their spirits and teach them the TRUTH about who they really are then that would be the most satisfying thing I could possibly do! And so that is what I am doing through my blog and my life coaching...

I love that you chose Courage and Inspired Action as 2 key points for you. I found that embracing those 2 aspects really helped me in getting on my path to authentic living.

This is a lovely post. I am still on a journey of self discovery, but loving what I am learning. I didn't realise how much emphasis and importance I placed on what others thought of me. Having always been successful (at least what I thought was successful) in school, with friends and at work, I realised something was missing. I felt no real connection to myself. The last couple of years have seen me embark on a journey of learning who I am, but not only that, I am learning to love what I find. For the first time since I can remember, I am feeling ok being me and listening to my own heart & intuition.

I am starting to understand what makes me feel alive, and am learning ways to get out of my head and detach from all the mental chatter going on. I also have a great love of teaching, although I am not trained as a teacher, helping others is something I love. I feel much more grounded and comfortable with the decisions I make, perhaps a sign I am trusting my own sense, rather than what I have been taught would 'be the right thing'...

I believe a big difference for me has come in choosing love, and loving myself no matter what. It has given me great comfort and strength to know I am able to support myself.

I will continue to act with courage and explore my passions, and let go of what other people think, or what they feel is best for me. Someone once shared with me the advice of being your own cheerleader, barracking for yourself in all situations!

Karen, thank you for such an honest and gorgeous comment. I love that you are developing such a beautiful connection with yourself. That is how I began my path to authenticity too - by just taking alot of time out for me and engaging in practices that allowed me to go deeper in to who I was.

It sounds like you are on an amazing journey at the moment of finding your passions, following your heart and learning to love yourself. That is so awesome!

Keep walking this path and cheerleading yourself the whole way! I look forward to hearing more about how it all unfolds for you

"Let go of others opinions: You are going to have to give up on putting other peoples opinions before your own. You will have to stop worrying about what other people will think. You cannot live an authentic life if you are continuously trying to mould yourself to the preferences of others. To play a big, true, real life you must march to the beat of your own drum and know that the people who truly love you will you support you no matter what."

Wow... Was that paragraph written specifically for me? It sure feels as if it could have been. I'm a chronic people-pleaser. I put everyone else's opinions before my own values, and I'm always worrying about being judged if I put my true self forward. And yet I know all the tricks. I constantly tell other people to go for it, ignore the nay-sayers, live out their dreams. But do I follow my own advice..? I'm sure you can guess the answer to that.

My theme for 2012 is kindness, meaning kindness to myself. I'm only hurting myself by keeping my heart's desires a secret. My dream, authentic life is a world away from the one I'm living now. I have to start making it a reality, throwing caution to the wind and just going for it. My boyfriend said something to me a couple of days ago that really hit home. He said he doesn't want us to end up as a couple of old people who regret all the things they didn't do...

Rebecca, it is so wonderful to hear that you can relate so closely to what I have written here. I found that my concern about what others would think was the number one thing that blocked me from taking the risks required to follow my dreams and live authentically.

I found that several things helped me in overcoming that... 1. Developing such a deep knowing of my self and an awareness of my inner guidance, that I could always trust I was doing the right thing. 2. Realising what I was here to do in the world was not about ME and by obsessing over my self consciousness I was blocking myself from serving others3. Feeling the fear and doing it anyway - Seriously I have taken plenty of actions that I knew others may not approve of, and were I was so scared of others judgements, but I did it anyway because it was part of my purpose4. Loving myself, honouring myself and believing in my right to do what I love and be happy

By the way, I love your blog. It sounds like you are really on a wonderful journey at the moment. I look forward to reading more!

"To play a big, true, real life you must march to the beat of your own drum and know that the people who truly love you will support you no matter what." --- This really rang a bell for me. I've always been known to be very introspective and self-aware, but because of my constant need for approval, I find myself putting my authentic self on the back burner in order to please those around me. This sentence you wrote is a reminder that it shouldn't matter what others think of you, that the ones who stick around when you're the real you, are the ones who truly matter.

April dawn I can really relate to the 'people pleaser' pattern. This has been a huge hindrance in my path to authentic living. It is still a pattern that continues to arise for me, but now because I have awareness of it, I can stop in the moment and CHOOSE whether I want to buy in to this pattern or choose a new way of being.

It really helps when you have a powerful reason WHY behind your choice to live authentically. It means that whenever you start resorting back to your old patterns you can remind yourself WHY living authentically means so much to you. I hope that helps.

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My name is Connie. I am a certified transformation coach and a passionate writer who has an addiction to green juice and an intense love of yoga. If you wish you get in touch, please email me at connie@conniechapman.com